Earth Sciences: Year In Review 2008

Geology and Geochemistry

The theme of the 33rd International Geological Congress, which was held in Norway in August 2008, was “Earth System Science: Foundation for Sustainable Development.” It was attended by nearly 6,000 scientists from 113 countries. In addition to the standard symposia, there were seven sessions—on such topics as geohazards, resources (water, minerals, and energy), and climate change—that highlighted the relevance of geology to society. The OneGeology global project was officially launched during the meeting. The project was a breakthrough in international scientific cooperation, with more than 90 countries participating to create a global database of geologic map data that could be accessed on the World Wide Web.

Not only was human society dependent upon geology, but humans had become a significant force in geologic processes. Members of the stratigraphy commission of the Geological Society of London published a paper that explored the idea that the Earth had entered a new geologic epoch—the Anthropocene—characterized by a global environment dominated by human activity. With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as global population exploded, agricultural and industrial activities began to leave distinctive stratigraphic signatures that included novel sedimentary, geochemical, biotic, and climatic changes. One such change was the dramatic increase in erosion and denudation of the continents that by the 21st century had exceeded the natural production of sediments by an order of magnitude. Population growth with industrialization had disrupted the biogeochemical carbon cycle by leading to the burning, within a few hundred years, of fossil carbon fuels that had accumulated within rocks through hundreds of millions of years. The resultant carbon emissions were causing significant changes in global temperature, ocean acidity, and the geochemistry of the biosphere.

Earth SciencesJonathan O’NeilGoing back in geologic time, Jonathan O’Neil of McGill University, Montreal, and coauthors published the geochemistry of geologically complex rocks from a portion of bedrock in northern Quebec. Their analysis of the rocks’ content of neodymium and samarium, two rare-earth elements, indicated that the rocks were 4.28 billion years old and suggested that they might represent the oldest preserved crustal rocks on Earth. The most ancient rocks known previously were about 4.03 billion years old. (4.36-billion-year-old zircon crystals had also been identified but only as tiny mineral grains embedded in younger rock.)

Despite society’s influence (and dependence) on geology and geochemistry, humans remained vulnerable to the power of geologic processes, as demonstrated by the earthquake of moment magnitude 7.9 that devastated Sichuan province, China, on May 12, 2008. (See Geophysics.) This earthquake had not been expected on the basis of standard geophysical criteria. In a report published in July, Eric Kirby of Pennsylvania State University and coauthors described how their geomorphic analysis of these mountains had identified locations of active rock uplift indicating seismic risk. Tectonic signatures for active displacements included dramatic changes in the steepness of river profiles in the rugged margins of the mountain ranges that coincided precisely with faults. They concluded that the Sichuan earthquake provided compelling evidence that the landscape contained much information about rates of tectonic activity. Quantitative geologic analyses of similar information in other locations could become a useful tool for refinement of potential earthquake risk that was not recorded by satellite measurements of displacement rates.

Rebecca Flowers and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology changed the widely accepted interpretation for the uplift history of the Colorado Plateau and its incision by the Colorado River to form the Grand Canyon. The accepted interpretation had been that the plateau began to rise to its present elevation of about 2,100 m (7,000 ft) some 6 million years ago, with the river cutting downward as the land rose. The new results demonstrated that the uplift process began more than 55 million years ago. Between about 550 million and 250 million years ago, the layers of sediments forming the Colorado Plateau accumulated beneath a sea. The sediments increased in temperature as they became deeply buried but then cooled as they later were uplifted slowly while erosion stripped away the overlying rocks. The researchers used a new geochemical technique to analyze and date the mineral apatite that existed in trace amounts within the sediments. The helium-uranium-thorium dating procedure determined when the apatite crystal in the heated rock cooled to about 70 °C (160 °F). The crystal typically reached that temperature when the buried rock had risen to about 1.6 km (1 mi) beneath the eroded surface. By dating the apatite minerals from within canyons and across the plateau surface, the researchers were able to correlate through time the elevations of sediments in different locations. For example, they found that sediments at the bottom of an eastern part of the canyon had the same apatite-derived age—55 million years ago—as the sediments on the plateau above. This demonstrated that a canyon had already been carved through a plateau that existed at that time. The study revealed many historical complexities, including the unexpected result that while the canyon was being cut deeper (through about 1,500 m [5,000 ft] of rock), the adjacent plateau sediments were also being eroded away.

Geologic and geochemical studies of sediments could yield many historical records, including temperature change through time. Jean-Noel Proust and other members of a France–New Zealand research program presented some initial results from 31 sediment cores recovered from the Tasman Sea near New Zealand. The objective was “to disentangle the impact of tectonics and climate on the landscape evolution of New Zealand over the past million years…relating to events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and cyclones.” New Zealand is associated with active tectonic plate boundaries, mountain building, and earthquakes. It occupies a unique position in the system of global ocean currents and in the westerly atmospheric wind belt. During the past one million years, it experienced drastic glacial-interglacial climatic changes. Large amounts of sediment were deposited into the adjacent seas because of this confluence of tectonic and climatic conditions, and these sediments reflected the conditions of erosion, transportation, and submarine deposition. The high sedimentation rates permitted high-resolution chronological studies in steps as small as 100 years, and preliminary results confirmed complex interactions between tectonics and climate.

Achim Brauer of the German Research Centre for Geosciences and coauthors provided the precise date for a sudden episode of cooling, called the Younger Dryas, that occurred about 12,700 years ago. From their analyses of annually laminated sediments below a deep volcanic lake in Germany, they defined and dated (using carbon isotopes) thin layers that spanned a 230-year period around the start of the episode. Their microscopic and geochemical studies of minerals and fossils carried out to a resolution of 50 microns permitted interpretation of lake level and wind speed from year to year and even between seasons. Following a series of annual and decadal oscillations, a final abrupt increase in winter storminess occurred in 12,679 bp. The researchers suggested that the event marked a shift in the North Atlantic westerly winds, which caused the climate to topple within one year into a completely different mode—one of extreme cooling.

Mark Schaefer and six other former officials from a variety of U.S. federal agencies proposed that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) be merged to form a new Earth Systems Science Agency (ESSA). The sciences of geology and geochemistry extend from solid rock through the hydrosphere and into the atmosphere and thereby overlapped the domains of the USGS and NOAA. Under the proposal, ESSA would build a strong collaboration with the Earth Science programs of NASA, especially its space-based Earth Observing Systems. The authors made the case that this reorganization would be more efficient and effective in meeting the future threats to the economic security of the United States and other countries. The threats were represented by risks concerning geologic resources (such as minerals, fossil fuels, and water supply) and the environment (such as natural disasters and climate change).

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